sandrine thiebaud mathieu

As a painter, she stripped the canvas of its paint to return to what she presaged to be the essential. To quote Didier Eribon, we would say that her work is "trans'class", a bridge to connect two worlds: the worker-hosier world in which she grew up, to that of Art, brilliant.

She uses thousands of pins that she sticks side by side in the fabric, in more or less tight rows, straight or undulating. They force the fabric, twist it until it is kept in its motion, stopped. Sometimes, as a first step, handmade embroidery punctuates the fabric; paths to guide the dive of the pins.

Transfigured, the simple small material tends to do work. Thus are born abstract maps whose titles are often borrowed from the writings of Bachelard, Arthur H, Borges or Damasio, in whom she finds the accuracy of words. Always by resonance, the title imposes itself. The work named then becomes tangible. She likes this idea. Sometimes the title echoes a current event because the work has not escaped it.